Preservation Parade: The Mediatization of the Lieb House into a Monument

This essay reflects on the March 2009 relocation of Venturi and Rauch's 1960s Lieb House from its original site on the New Jersey shore to a new seaside location on Long Island, arguing that the Lieb House reached the status of a historic monument only due to the media spectacle of its dramatic waterborne rescue passing through the waters of New York City. Stierli situates the moving of the Lieb House within the tradition of the mobile monument and interprets the voyage as a reconfiguration of ancient processions where the idol has now been replaced by the monument. Historic preservationists, Stierli argues, must comply with the logic of the spectacle while at the same time subverting it.